The melancholy underscoring even the android-sex jam feels both personal and more than a little musty. [Aug 2016, p.80]

It's a faintly sparkling, wistful listen, where from her vocal monotone, you wonder if she's mocking those sexually stereotypical longings. Perhaps that's optimistic, but either way, it's satisfying that she's taken a different tack. [Mar 2011, p.98]

Bad Love takes a less romantic view of life, but sonically, the retro filter is still very much on. [Aug 2015, p.81]

The multi-ethnic Jessica 6 blend disco, soul, house and melodramatic ballads with both skill and affection. [Jul 2011, p.87]

If the results are amiable rather than arresting, at this far down the road, that's surely enough. [Apr 2015, p.75]

He stretches out into these songs, inhabiting them comfortably and casually, almost always finding a way to make the familiar sound fresh. [Aug 2018, p.32]

Wreckorder;s main virtues--decent songs, solidly played--are also its downfall, and you end up wondering why Healy bothered taking a vacation only to stay at home. [Nov 2010, p.90]

The humourless skits drag... but somehow the Handsome Boy charm still wins through. [Dec 2004, p.137]

You can occasionally hear [Adem's and Hebden's] trademark sounds punctuate these proggy, Tortoise-like instrumentals. [Jul 2007, p.102]

The highlights are splendid: a brass-embellished "Red Hill Mining Town", a languid piano-led "Beautiful Day", a near-calypso "Miracle of Joey Ramone". [Apr 2023, p.38]

The results, while hardly ground-breaking, are moving and accomplished. [Sep 2010, p.102]

As always, her lyrics are unambiguous - too on-the-nose for some - but there's an admirable unfussiness to it all. [Apr 2020, p.23]

Outbursts takes them full circle, back to their salad days as a melodic, acoustic folk-pop duo on simple, ringing, uplifting songs such as "Sea Change," "never Stops" and "Will Power," while the Radiohead-influenced "Radio Silence" hint at a grander ambition. [Apr 2010, p.106]

There's a nervy, frayed soulfulness to these songs. [Feb 2007, p.76]

The songs are neither dogmatic nor whacked out. Like fine pop writers before him, Oberst's simply wrestling with something troubling he feels thick in the air. [Feb 2005, p.72]

Mark Ronson will be looking elsewhere for his next single. [July 2008, p.115]

Johns eliminates the melodramatic slow builds and punches up the groove quotient, much as he did for Ryan Adams on the similarly melancholy Heartbreaker. [Mar 2011, p.85]

It's not earthshaking, but there's nothing wrong with simply being likable. [Sep 2014, p.69]

There are moments where the strings and backing vocals lurch into sickly sweet. But at least half of this album successfully unites two of America's greatest songwriters. [Oct 2010, p.109]

Too much here is self-congratulatory sloganeering. [Nov 2004, p.110]

Spinnerette sees the former Distillers leader at the head of a band not dissimilar to that run by her husband, Josh Homme. [Jul 2009, p.101]

Bristl[es] with wit, energy and nifty hooks. [May 2007, p.99]

The skeletal bluesy shuffles are easy to follow, but the likes of 'Avalanch In B' suggest a band lyrically happy to keep the unpleasantness in their woodshed under wraps. [Oct 2008, p.81]

A hazy, boozy affair that threatens to collapse at any time but is buoyed by good-times psychedelic pub-rock chuugers. [Oct 2008, p.105]

It's so generic it could be sold in a supermarket basics range. [Apr 2012, p.83]

A highly assured debut. [Apr 2015, p.75]

Beguiling mix of gothic Southern soul and outlaw country. [Dec 2018, p.27]